Tea Leaves

There’s no shame in bugs.

Really. In consumer-grade software, there are bugs. I wish it wasn’t so, but it is so. I can’t think of a product I’ve used in the past 20 years that hasn’t had a bug or two.

There are a few different reactions to finding out that your product has a bug. One of those reactions is to say nothing at all. While this often displeases the peanut gallery, sometimes it’s the wisest course. Another reaction is to acknowledge the bug and move on. “Oh man, you’re right. That sucks. I hope we can get that fixed soon.” I think that’s usually a pretty good response, although it may give your lawyers a conniption fit.

Then there’s what I have come, over the years, to think of as “The Linux Answer.” That’s the one where you blame the user for wanting to use the product in a way which exercises the bug.

User: “The kernel’s interface for force unmounting the filesystem is broken, and it can’t ever possibly work.”
Developer: “Why are you trying to force unmount? You shouldn’t try to use that API, even though it’s documented and no bugs are filed against it.”

User: “The performance of the threads implementation on your OS is an order of magnitude worse than the one on these other OSs when I run any app that uses a lot of threads.”
Developer: “Threads are stupid. You should rewrite all your code.”

It’s not really fair anymore to call this “the Linux answer,” because of course overzealous fans of any product sometimes have this sort of reaction when confronted with its shortcomings. As a developer, I find that I get possessive of the code I write. Someone will ask me how a component I’ve contributed to acts when given certain inputs, and I’ll find myself saying “well, when we get this request, we apply these policies and then give this answer back to you.” And then I’ll stop, and listen to myself referring to the code I wrote in the first person, and have to smack myself in the head a few times.

I suspect that it’s this sort of anthropomorphism of software that causes The Linux Answer. Some level of identification with your code is inevitable (it provides a convenient conversational framework, if nothing else). But when it reaches the point that you’re willing to blame the user for criticizing your code (because the user is therefore criticizing you, which wounds your feelings) — well, look. It’s just code. It has bugs. Fixing the bugs is good. And you can’t fix the bugs unless you know about them.

So the right thing to do when a user tells you about a bug is to thank her.

I like to cook but I am, by nature, a rather lazy person. This can be a problem at times, since good food is often labor intensive. Luckily, many of the best things you can make do not require your full attention during the making. So here are some easy recipes for great food that you can make while playing Halo.

Rice

Use a rice cooker. Set and forget. You can play Halo for 20 to 30 minutes while it cooks.

Coffee in a French Press

OK. This is barely a recipe, and you don’t get to play Halo, but bear with me.

I like coffee, but making a really good drip or espresso or even moka pot shot is sometimes just too much cognitive effort. For these times, I do this

- Put two or three handfuls of beans in the grinder. Set to coarse.

- Grind it all.

- Dump in french press. I use one of the larger Bodum ones that hold around 8 cups of liquid.

- Add hot water. I fill it half way or two thirds of the way up.

Wait a while. Drink. The trick is to judge the amount of water you should put in by how many grounds you end up with, and don’t let the grounds sit in the press too long. I like to put in way too much coffee but not have it sit in the water that long before pressing it.

I hear vaccum pots are also a nice lazy way to make coffee. They make me nervous about boiling the coffee too much.

The french press also lets you be really lazy and make good tea. And tea is even less work than coffee because you can steep it multiple times. This is good for when you are sick.

Homemade Chicken and Matzoh Ball Soup

I described this to my boss one day, and he thought it sounded like too much work. So I tried to cut it down a bit.

First, buy a two or three pound package of chicken wings. Then cut up 2 onions, 2 or 3 carrots, and 2 or 3 stalks of celery. Put all this in a pot, cover with water, add salt, pepper, and bay leaves. Turn the heat on until you get a simmer. Now play Halo for 3 or 4 hours. If you are industrious, you can saute the vegetables before adding the wings and the water. You can also hack the wings in half. But these are both extra work and not really needed.

Here is the hardest part: dice an onion, 2 more carrots and 1 or 2 more celery stalks. Dice as small as you can.

Saute these in a soup pot with salt and pepper. Add a quart or two of stock, as much white wine as you like, and another quart or two of water (until you get enough soup). Simmer this for a while. Then make matzoh balls using the directions on the mix. Add to the broth, get all this to a low simmer. Go play Halo for however long you like your matzoh balls to sit.

That’s all.

Pasta with Bolognese Meat Sauce

Start with a pound and a half of ground beef.

Dice 1 or 2 onions, 3 or 4 carrots, 2 or 3 celery stalks. You want to dice this as small as you possibly can. This is the only hard work in the whole recipe.

Saute the onions in a pan with olive oil. Add carrots and celery. Add salt and pepper.

Now put the beef in with another spray of salt and pepper. Brown it until it is not red anymore.

Add a cup or so of milk. Turn the heat to simmer. Play Halo until the milk has reduced off. Check the stove between matches (every 10 minutes or so).

Add a cup or so of white wine. Do the same simmer and Halo trick.

After the white wine has cooked off, add one 28oz can of crushed tomatoes (maybe slightly more), or the same volume of fresh that you have ground up in the Cuisinart. Stir, turn the stove down as low as it will go. Play Halo for 5 or 6 hours, stirring every few rounds.

Now make your favorite pasta that is similar to penne. Mix the pasta with the sauce, grate on some Parmigiano Reggiano. Eat.

Indestructible Beef Stew

This is a variation on Pete’s Braised Beef.

Dice an onion, saute in olive oil. Throw in a pound or two of cubed stew beef. Add salt and pepper. Stir around until the beef is browned. Add sliced mushrooms and a couple cups of red wine. Put this in the an oven set to 300-350F. Go play Halo for an hour or two.

When you get all done with Halo, cut up a few potatoes, and a couple of carrots. Add this to the pot, throw it back in the oven. Play Halo for 2 or 3 more hours.

Pull the stew out, throw in frozen peas. Salt and pepper to taste. Stir it around so everything is still hot. Serve with bread or rice.

Note: I call this indestructible stew because one time I accidentally added soy sauce instead of red wine, and the stew was still edible.

What recipes do you have that require little work, and allow you to play Halo and still get credit for kitchen time?

It’s been a while since the last top ten list. You know what that means.

Today’s topic: famous quotations that are improved if you replace one of the nouns with the word “pants.” Some of the sources are obvious, some are a little more obscure. The tag of whoever suggested a particular twisted quote follows each quote in italics. Feel free to ask for attributions for the original quotes or contribute your own entries in the comments.

“It is bitter — bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my pants.” [peterb]

Hope is the thing with trousers. [peterb]

Cover her face; my pants dazzle; she died young. [agroce]

If you meet the Buddha on the road, pants him. [visigoth]

Qui du cul d’un chien s’amourose, Il lui parait un pantalon. [peterb]

Lasciate ogni pantaloni, voi ch’entrate. [peterb]

The pants that can be named are not the true pants. [sdavis]

Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius,
That you would have me seek into my pants,
For that which is not in them? [mahim]

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our pants,
But in ourselves. [agroce]

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of pants. [visigoth]

Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your pants. [peterb]

You’re one microscopic cog
In his catastrophic plan
Designed and directed by his Red Right Pants [agroce]

My god, it’s full of pants. [sdavis]

Men have died from time to time,
and worms have eaten them, but not for pants. [agroce]

Pants first; morals later. [peterb]

Scandal is pants made tedious by morality. [visigoth]

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of pants. [agroce]

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate pants. [rlink]

Of all the pants, in all the towns, in all the world … she walks into mine. [mahim]

In the beginning there was the word, and that word was “pants” [sdavis]

Don’t judge a person until you’ve walked a mile in their pants. [dpelleg]

I’m shocked, shocked to find that pants are going on in here! [agroce]

Some pants! Some pants! My kingdom for some pants! [tomault]

In Heaven, everything is fine.
In Heaven, everything is fine.
You’ll have your nice pants
and I’ll have mine. [peterb]

And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure pants to replenish our precious bodily fluids. [sdavis]

Oh Pants, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
in the howling storm

Has found out thy seams
Of crimson joy.
And with his dark secret love,
does thy thread destroy. [jch]

Man I ain’t getting nowhere just sitting in pants like this
There’s something happening somewhere baby I just know that there is. [mahim]

Something zippered this way comes. [peterb]

A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the pants you may never get over. [rlink]

Look, Daddy! Teacher says, every time a bell rings, an angel gets his pants! [visigoth]

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, pants? [clamen]

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in pants. [krevis]

I should have been a pair of ragged pants
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. [agroce]

In pants, no one can hear you scream. [rlink]

Renewed shall be blade that was broken:
The pantsless again shall be king. [peterb]

It is by pants alone I set my mind in motion. [visigoth]

The pants of the many outweigh the pants of the few. [sdavis]

Socialism needs democracy like the human body needs pants. [visigoth]

A man without religion is like a fish without pants. [peterb]

The fastest way to a man’s heart is through his pants. [tomault]

Despair thy charm;
And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his pants
Untimely ripp’d. [jch]

Look on my pants, ye mighty, and despair. [nlanza]

I only regret that I have but one pair of pants to give for my country. [psu]

(the full, unedited list may be found here.)

Land of Legends

Indie Game Week may be over, but that doesn’t mean Tea Leaves won’t continue its coverage of independent games. Since yesterday’s article was about consoles that can only be used to play duly authorized corporate funded and developed megaprojects, let’s veer off today and look at a small, independently-produced game for Windows PCs: Tiny Hero Game Studio’s Land of Legends.

As I’ve mentioned several times, I have a soft spot in my heart for turn-based tactical combat games. Land of Legends falls firmly into this category, derived straight from board games such as Squad Leader and computer games such as Warlords. Here’s a few brief comments about Land of Legends, based on the beta.

The metamechanic in Land of Legends is, in my taxonomy, “Single move / Turn Based.” By this I mean that you move one piece at a time, and you have the option to move all your pieces on your turn, rather than there being some attempt at simulating simultaneous movement via initiative. This is a fine system, with a number of virtues. It’s simple to implement, of course, and also easy for the player to understand. Some of the best tactical combat games, such as Nectaris and it’s barely-known sequel Earthlight, fall into this category.

Zombie "card"

The art in the game is bouncy and lighthearted. It’s heavily influenced by both Japanese manga and Richard and Wendy Pini’s Elfquest. Animation is minimal at this point in its development, but that’s fine — the graphics are meant to be iconic, and they get the point across perfectly. One element of the interface that doesn’t work quite as well are the cards used to represent units. They’re meant to be a compact representation of all the attributes and powers a unit can have. And they are. They’re pretty, and have a nice sense of style about them. But I found the icons beyond attack, defend, and move to be a bit bewildering, especially when every piece has its own unique power. To work around this, you hover the mouse over the icons to get a tooltip-style description of what it is, but doing this thirty times in a battle gets tiresome. I understand the desire to invoke the feel of a collectable card game, but it doesn’t quite gel here.

Only a few maps were available in the beta for single-player play, but they were diverse enough to showcase some of the careful design that went in to the game. One aspect of the game balance that I liked is that there are quite a lot of “support” units that don’t deal direct damage. For example, the “Mystic” unit has the ability to increase the mobility of your forces by allowing a piece that has already moved to move again. Another nice attribute is that most of the battles available have a specific goal besides “kill all the bad guys,” so there’s some strategic flexibility built in to the engine. On the downside, most of the maps that are available in the demo are extremely small. None approach the size of a decent Warlords map or, choosing an open source example, The Battle for Wesnoth. It may very well be that the released version will have some battles more epic in scope; we’ll have to wait and see.

One interesting technical note: the beta of Land of Legends was written in C#, and relied on the .NET framework and Managed DirectX. This means that that build, of course, was completely impossible to port to other popular platforms, such as Linux or MacOS. The game is currently being ported to C++. I do hope the developers consider making the game available on other platforms: portable code is good code. I enjoyed the taste of Land of Legends, and look forward to trying it again when it is completed. That it plays as well as it does this early in its development is a good sign indeed.

Land of Legends supports online play, but I didn’t try this it out, as inevitably when I play tactical games online I get whipped like a copper bowl filled with cream, and then I have to go sulk for two weeks.

If you want to try Land of Legends for yourself, you’ll need to create an account on Tiny Hero’s web site and then follow these instructions. It is currently available only for Windows.

Earlier I babbled at length about the three major consoles. Well, the result predicted in that piece has come to pass. I have come out of the other side of the Christmas season with a new GameCube and a new slim line PS2.

GameCube

You will recall that I came into this thinking that the Nintendo box would be the stronger of the two. This was mostly based on my experience with the GameBoy Advance, which is an excellent little box with a lot of excellent little games. In my mind, the latent GameCube was like a big GBA but with prettier graphics allowing the creation of even bigger, more immersive versions of all the great GBA games. But, this isn’t really how it turned out.

There are two problems with the actual GameCube that make me like it less than I thought I would.

The Controller Sucks

While it fits the hands well, the GameCube controller, to me, feels sloppy and imprecise. It’s hard to make the sticks go where you want, and the camera stick feels different than the main control stick, which is disturbing. It’s not clear to me that the oddball placement of the face buttons achieves any real purpose. Finally, the two stage triggers are morally disordered. They have neither the easy accessibility of the PS2 shoulder buttons nor the long smooth travel of the Xbox triggers. Overall, the Xbox controller S and the PS2 controller are both much nicer to use.

Expensive Games

It seems to take forever for the Nintendo titles to get cheap. It is just recently the case that titles that have been around forever, like Zelda and Mario Sunshine are starting to hit the bargain bins. This cuts down on the number of titles I’ve tried.

So far I’ve played mainly Zelda and Mario Golf on this machine. I also tried out Tales of Symphonia (because it was free). Let us not speak of that game again.

Mario Golf is wacky and fun. Zelda is not the transcendent experience that I was expecting. The game design, plot, graphics, music and gameplay are all for the most part excellent. However, I found some of the controls, and especially the camera, a bit sloppy. The game has a hybrid camera system that both sticks to the main character and allows you to spin the camera around using the second stick on the controller. Unfortunately, the free camera is so loose that it’s useless and the non-free camera is sort of stupid, often ending up behind your head or in some wall somewhere so you can’t see anything. This, combined with the controller problems make me slightly less enthusiastic about this game than I think I should be. Luckily, I just found the Explosive Fruit, and I think all is forgiven.

Playstation 2

I like this box more than I thought I would. In particular, I love the controller. While the shoulder buttons are weak compared to the great triggers on the Xbox, the overall layout of the controller is just perfect for my hands. It’s easy to reach all the buttons and the sticks all at the same time without stretching my hands much on the controller. The controller is neither too large nor too small. Finally, I seem to be able to play the longest on this controller before needing to rest my hands.

The games on the PS2 all come in at or above expectations. Disgaea is a fun strategy and battle game with twisted penguins that say “Dude!” a lot. Katarmari Damacy is so good my wife plays it. Ico is beautiful to look at, but I’ve been too distracted by other things to really get started.

The surprise is Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando. I picked it up cheap with low expectations because I had given up on all the other third person shooter/action games I ever tried. R&C is different. The controls are tight and well tuned. It’s easy to jump, flip, shoot, and hit stuff. Perhaps most importantly, the camera and targeting system mostly help you shoot and destroy enemies rather than getting in your way. This makes the combat fun, even when it gets a bit hard. I wish Zelda controlled this well. The game has a fast pace, levels that are not too long, its always easy to keep track of what you are supposed to be doing. The only major flaw is the psychotic save point system, but the pacing of the game mostly makes up for that.

So, overall, except for a bit of role reversal, I think the material consoles lived up to their latent expectations. I still play too much Halo 2.

Yesterday, I finished The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

It took me about 2 years or so to finish it. This isn’t because the game was particularly hard, but because about 18 months ago I reached the final dungeon, made it most of the way through, and then, dreading the inevitable endless boss battle, set the game aside.

My game shelf is a study in unfinished business. Just glancing along it I can see numerous games that I’ve abandoned midway through. As I look at them, I feel a vague sense of unease, of foreboding. A sense of obligations unmet.

I feel guilty because I didn’t play games.

The odd thing is, this doesn’t happen to me over, for example, books. With a book, I tend to either read it until I’m finished, or decide that it’s not worth reading. Then I put the book away forever without any guilt whatsoever. It seems to be only videogames which throw me into such emotional turmoil.

Could this be an expression of psu’s theory of the latent object of desire? Perhaps the games represent my failure to fulfill that desire. I fixated on what I “needed” to be satisfied, purchased it, and there the object sits on my shelf, rebuking me with expectations unfulfilled? That theory fails, I think, because of the lack of guilt over books and movies on my shelves, which certainly qualify as (former) latent objects.

I don’t have a big picture explanation for this, but perhaps inspecting each game I’ve abandoned will bring enlightenment. I’ll limit the discussion to console games, or else I’ll be here all day, writing separate entries for every Wizardry game since The Knight of Diamonds.

• Silent Hill 3 - Stopped playing after I finished the first monster-filled area, right after I got to the subway. The boss battle with the monster penis convinced me that the authors were completely out of ideas and it was just going to be 30 hours of more of the same.
• Beyond Good and Evil - I was enjoying everything about this game and was most of the way through when I was forced to take a break for about two weeks due to work. When I came back, I realized that my tenuous grasp of the plot had evaporated. I was sneaking around a big factory with absolutely no idea why I was there or what I should do next.
• Fatal Frame 2 - I really liked the plot here. Great mood, pacing was a little slow, but the controls were so frustrating that playing felt more like volunteer work at an old age home than “having fun.” This game also has the save point problem. I abandoned it when I encountered an invincible boss monster. Later, I learned that you’re supposed to run away from him. But there’s no context in the game to tell you that, and the nearest save point before this boss is about 6 minutes of play time away. After the third time he killed me, the mere thought of trudging my way back to him again sapped my very will to live.
• Shenmue (1 and 2) - I always love this game when I think about it. Then I try to play it, and rediscover how bad the controls are. Then I hate it. Although, to this day I still giggle at the image of a Japanese teenager in a leather jacket wandering around the rough parts of town asking everyone “Do you know where the sailors hang out?”
• Dynasty Warriors 3 (and 4) - Lots of action! Pretty costumes! Stupid console save point mechanics! Bye bye.
• Deux Ex: Invisible War - Reasonable controls, intriguing plot, and nice cutscenes, but somehow soulless. Despite its explosions and bombast, the game never instilled a sense of urgency in me.
• Panzer Dragoon Orta - No actual guilt over this one. I want to see the “plot,” such as it is, but I’m just too old and slow to successfully make it past level 8.
• Conker’s Bad Fur Day - Another no-guilt title. It just wasn’t funny. I was ready to quit the moment I saw the “poop level.” (Here’s a pet peeve: when people call scatological humor “adult.” It isn’t.)

Now I understand. It’s perfectly clear. I have transcended my guilt, and left it behind. I stopped playing all of these games because there was some part of them that I didn’t like. I felt guilty because the parts of the games that I did like were more memorable than the parts of the games that I didn’t like. So when I thought of Beyond Good and Evil, for example, I would think to myself “Gee, I’m vaguely sad that I don’t know whatever happened to Jade and her battle against the zombie aliens,” instead of “Wow, I sure am glad that I don’t have to deal with those super-frustrating save points that are spread too far apart.”

So now that some of my reasons for abandoning games are down in black and white, let me try to distill them into general principles that developers can use to make their games more compelling. More compelling to me, at least, and of course I am the apotheosis of what All Gamers Want.

1. Keep the action moving constantly. A game where the plot moves along at a brisk pace will keep me more interested than a game where I have to engage in 300 random battles to reach the next phase. While Zelda doesn’t proceed at breakneck speed, its pacing is perfectly consistent from start to finish. Once you’ve played for an hour or so, you develop an innate sense of about how far away you are from the next plot point. This consistency did a lot to keep me playing.

2. Stupid control schemes ruin games. You can have the best plot in the world, but if moving my protagonist around feels like driving a one-wheeled forklift, it’s not a game I’ll keep playing very long.

3. Replaying sequences is boring. You’ve heard me say it before — console-style save points are idiotic. In a single player game, there is no value in forcing the player to replay a segment they’ve already cleared. None. Whatsoever. For any reason. If I feel like I’m a hamster in a spinning wheel, I drop the game as quickly as possible.

4. Game difficulty needs to adapt to the player. This is related to points (1) and (3). Many of the games I play let you choose a difficulty level. This is a classic example of the broken way software engineers think when left to their own devices. “We don’t want to do the work to make a smart decision, so let’s give the user a knob they can twist to choose the behavior of our product.” Even though at the time the game asks the player to choose the difficulty level, the player isn’t in a position know what it means. This is especially egregious in games where you can’t change the difficulty level once you’ve started a game, but I’m not letting the other games off the hook either. A game with a narrative should be actively working to move the player along at a consistent pace, providing a challenge appropriate to their skill level. If the player is breezing through areas with ease, the game should throw a little more at them until they start to struggle. If the player is constantly dying, the game should dial the difficulty down. Do it quietly, do it without fuss, and do it without even informing the player. There are some games for which this model isn’t appropriate, but I maintain that any game with a significant, sustained narrative would benefit from it.

5. Tell the player how far along she is. I have an intrinsic bias towards shorter games, yet I don’t shy away from even the largest books. I was musing about this in conversation the other day, and Stewart Clamen incisively pointed out “You know how much longer you have with books.” He’s absolutely right: at any moment, you can just glance and know about how much further you have to read to end the experience. Some of the better games manage to do this (again, we can use Zelda as an example. There’s always a status screen showing you how much of the world you’ve uncovered, how many pieces of the Triforce remain to be found, and so on).

6. Lastly, boss battles are stupid. Scientific research that I just completely made up shows that the same people that like “boss” battles in videogames also like unusable third-person 3-d cameras. And drink white wine.

For the record, apart from Zelda, here’s a partial list of some of the games I have actually finished in the past few years: Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur’s Gate (I and II), Ico, Planescape: Torment, Halo 2, and the first two Silent Hill games. What these titles have in common is consistency of pacing. That’s why I listed it first in my list of principles. From this I conclude: in a narrative-focused game, pacing is paramount. Which sounds obvious but, based on the games I’ve played over the past few years, apparently isn’t.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to find that save file for Gladius. I’ve been playing it for nearly a year, and I’m just about halfway through.

After mentioning this dish in passing in the “what to drink” article, I realized that it was worth sharing the recipe. It is based loosely on one of Mario Batali’s. My version is a little bolder, and about 350% cheaper.

Start with 2 pounds of beef brisket (you can also use a large chuck roast or similar cut). Salt and pepper it, and brown it on all sides in a large stockpot with 6 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil. This will take you about 10 minutes, including time for turning. Set it aside.

Drain most of the liquid and then add one chopped carrot, one chopped onion, one chopped celery stalk, and about a quarter-pound of bacon, diced. Sweat those until they start to get soft. Pour in a bottle of Two Buck Chuck or some similarly cheap-but-drinky wine, and add 2 cups of simple tomato sauce (homemade is best, but the world won’t end if you use canned. We’re going to cook this into oblivion). Bring the concoction to a boil. Put the meat back in, lower the heat until just simmering, and cook until the meat starts falling apart — about 3 hours, but you can use your judgment. Since this is wet cooking, don’t worry about overcooking the meat.

When you’ve decided it’s done, remove the meat from the stockpot, raise the heat, and reduce the liquid until it reaches a consistency you like. Slice the meat, spoon the sauce over it, and serve.

Easy, delicious, and the leftovers will last for a few days if you keep your guests from devouring it all.

B1 Bomber (click to enlarge)

The second most tiresome thing about the “there’s too much violence in these newfangled videogames” discussion is that violence has always been a part of games.

The argument is made, usually poorly, that today’s violence is “worse” because graphics today are so much more vivid than they were in the past. This is twaddle. More accessible, perhaps, but not necessarily worse.

One need only to look to Thomas Pynchon’s V for an example of how the written word can depict more vividly than image. Chapter 4, “In Which Esther Gets a Nose Job” still makes me feel faint if I try to read the whole thing through at once, in a way that the goriest hospital video does not. I can only handle it a paragraph at a time. Here’s one of the easier passages, before the going gets really rocky:

Schoenmaker first made two incisions, one on either side through the internal lining of the nose, near the septum at the lower border of the side cartilage. He then pushed a pair of long-handled, curved and pointed scissors through the nostril, up past the cartilage to the nasal bone. The scissors had been designed to cut both on opening and closing. Quickly, like a barber finishing up a high-tipping head, he separated the bone from the membrane and skin over it. “Undermining, we call this,” he explained. He repeated the scissors work through the other nostril. “You see you have two nasal bones, they’re separated by your septum. At the bottom they’re each attached to a piece of lateral cartilage. I’m undermining you all the way from this attachment where the nasal bones join the forehead.”

By the time Schoenmaker gets out the saw, I’m usually ready for a stiff drink. The idea that better rendering of pictures inherently means more powerful images is false. Alfred Hitchcock made an entire career building suspense and emotion based as much on what he didn’t show as on what made it onscreen. If we are to worry about violence in games, it must not be in the mechanics of how it is depicted, but in the emotions it exploits.

Nukewar (click to enlarge)

In the early ’80s, Avalon-Hill released a few simple but challenging games, mostly written in BASIC. One was a version of Sid Sackson’s “Acquire”, another was a reconstruction of the Battle of Midway. Two of the ones I liked playing the most were B1 Bomber and Nukewar. I liked them because the goals were clear, the mechanics were simple, and the stakes were high. HOT WAR HOT WAR HOT WAR flashed the screen, and as a patriotic American I understood that it was time to fly to Leningrad, drop a single nuclear bomb, and kill everyone there, because, y’know. That was the job. There’s a war on, you know. Nukewar presented you with the further strategic decision of when, or whether, to start a war. In the screenshot to the right, you can see the results of a game where, as the US, I just sat tight and didn’t start a war, and the Russians beat me to the punch. The lesson is clear: if you want to survive, start a nuclear war. And people want to complain because there are games now that let you knock over a liquor store?

I don’t have an awful lot of sympathy for all the crocodile tears about the violence in games like Grand Theft Auto. Yes: I find it tasteless, I find it demeaning, and worst of all it’s not a very good game. But the quality and scale of the violence therein is not, it seems to me, necessarily any worse than the cold war fantasies of the Clancy generation, who believed (or in some cases still believe) that politics might — regrettably — require the murder of half the people in the world.

Truth and consequences

I don’t believe that Nukewar and its ilk did any lasting damage to me. I don’t believe that Grand Theft Auto will do any lasting damage to the people who play it. In the final analysis, games are instruments of fantasy. Fantasy, being what it is, often transgresses across boundaries that we do not cross in real life. Attempts to suppress, to channel such imaginings are just another form of fantasy — a fantasy that life is simple, and that we can always recognize evil when we see it. If you want to worry about violence, worry about the violence that is being done on our behalf. Institutional violence, where one person decides that the killing should start, but someone else has to go and do the actual dirty work, is to me the most frightening of all.

And it’s a lot harder to stop a war than to boycott a videogame.

Since psu covered cooking equipment yesterday, I wanted to talk a little about ingredients. In particular, alcohol. The typical home bar — and I use the term “bar” loosely, in my house it’s just The Cupboard With The Booze In It — is stocked more by happenstance than by planning. If, as is common, you buy your alcohol on an as-needed basis (”Oh, I need two ounces of Jasper’s Honeydew-and-Prosciutto Liqueur for these cookies…”) and don’t drink a lot yourself, then you end up with large quantities of comparatively expensive bottles that neither you nor anyone else will ever drink taking up lots of space. If you plan what you want or need, you can avoid that.

As in yesterday’s article, the goal here is to describe a reasonable minimum that you can have. This should give you flexibility in cooking, a small buffer with which to entertain your friends who drink, and provide a little room for growth and experimentation. If your heavy drinkin’ cousin Bartleby comes over and starts hitting the sauce, this might not satisfy his needs. Although maybe that’s a good thing.

Before we begin, I’d like to note that while alcohol is a common and useful ingredient in many cuisines, not everyone can have it. Some people are allergic to it, it’s generally considered inappropriate for children in anything but the tiniest quantiies, and many people — possibly you, or possibly one of your guests — have problems with alcoholism. For some of these situations, any alcohol is too much. So please remember as you read that when I say things like “You need a bottle of such-and-such in your pantry,” I’m referring to situations where alcohol in food (or a little social drinking) is acceptable. Obviously, if having booze around is going to result in disaster, you don’t “need” it.

Things You Need

-several bottles of red wine (I’ll go into more detail about exactly how much and what type below)
-one bottle of white wine
-one bottle of vodka
-one bottle of brandy
-one bottle of whiskey (optional, for entertaining guests who drink)
-one bottle of some form of digestif, aperitif, or cordial.
-equipment: glasses and a corkscrew.

That’s it. Obviously, this gets modified a little by your personal preferences. I like Porto. I love Porto. Therefore, I always have some. But I wouldn’t suggest that it be part of everyone’s standard kitchen stock.

Red wine is a gimme. It’s the thing you should be drinking a little of several times a week. In addition to being healthy and delicious, it adds depth to just about any tomato or meat dish. If you haven’t planned a sauce for any given meal, you can simply tack on “…and then deglaze the pan with a cup of red wine, and reduce until it starts to thicken” to the end of any almost recipe. Congratulations. Now you have sauce.

Wine is an intimidating topic for most people, because there’s such a variety of products out there, and most of us can only afford to sample a small percentage of what’s available. So what should you keep in the house? In order to answer this, we have to understand the fundamentals of wine. Yeah, yeah, nose, color, mouth feel, whatever. Those are incidental to the topic of wine. Here’s all you need to know to get started.

-Trust your own taste buds.

It doesn’t matter what Robert Parker, your snobby friends, or anyone else think of a wine. If you think it tastes bad, it does. If you think it tastes good, it does. The reason we turn to experts on wine is because of the expense incurred in figuring out what we like. If you luck out and find an expert whose tastes match yours (or, equally useful, an expert whose tastes completely oppose yours), then go ahead and trust them. But in the end, it’s all your call.

peterb’s Theorem of Wine Tasting: Let Ps represent an value indicating how good a given wine tastes, higher values meaning tastes better. Let E represent the price you personally paid for the wine. Pe, the amount of enjoyment one receives from wine, can be expressed by the formula: Pe = Ps / E

The obvious corollaries to this rule are: expensive wine tastes best when someone else is paying for it. Furthermore, if you like two wines about equally, the cheaper wine is better.

Since we’re stocking your kitchen, and since I’m not going to pay for your wine, the thing to do is to find an inexpensive red wine and stock up on it. For me, a case of Charles Shaw (”Two Buck Chuck”) Cabernet meets my base level needs just fine. If you’re in Pittsburgh where there aren’t any Trader Joe’s, and you can’t get that, ask friends who cook for their recommendations. Stick one bottle in the cabinet, put the rest of the case in the basement, and buy another case when you’re down to just a few bottles. And at $3 / bottle, I don’t feel guilty using it in whatever recipes I need, in copious quantities. (Personal note to Mario Batali: recommend just one more time that some poor schmuck upend a $60 bottle of Barolo into your recipe for braised beef and I’m going to drag you down to Nobu and shove two chopsticks so far up your nose you’ll be able to breath through your ears. Not only is Two Buck Chuck a more economical wine for that recipe, it tastes better in that sauce. If you want a $60 bottle of Barolo with that recipe, why not try drinking it, you testa di cavolfiore).

You only need one bottle of white wine because it’s better used younger, and so you’ll want to replace that bottle more frequently rather than buy a bunch and sit on them. Also, white wine is not as good as red wine, and people who like white wine more than red wine are the devil.

Vodka is a good neutral spirit to have around. I always keep some in the freezer. Get a small screw-top jar, put in a couple of split Madagascar vanilla beans, and fill the jar with vodka. In a couple of months, you’ll have your own vanilla extract that is cheaper per-ounce than what you can buy, and will also taste better. Top off the bottle with the vodka as you use it. There’s a lot of variability in vodka, so it’s worth avoiding the very bottom tier, which will taste more or less like battery acid. I favor Stolichnaya because it’s not too dear, but there are plenty of options that will work. If you plan to use the vodka for drinking, stick to 80 proof. If you’ll only use it for cooking and baking, 100 proof is fine.

Brandy is versatile. Any time you’re making a dessert, it’s worthwhile asking yourself if some brandy could play a role. It’s a volatile spirit, but it has a very interesting flavour, and quite a lot of it. This means you can add it to any sort of heated concoction and boil off the alcohol, but still infuse the dish with the taste and (psychological) warmth of the brandy. Brandy matches with any sort of fruit desserts perfectly, and is should also be your liquor of choice for flambé. There’s no limit to the types and varieties of brandy, and not coindentally there’s no limit to the amount of money you can spend on the high end. If you’re not going to be drinking it, something like Hennessey VS Cognac should only cost you around $25 / 750ml, and will last a long time. If you’re going to sip it, you might look in to a more unusual and tastier choice, such as a good Armagnac, but then you probably won’t want to cook with it. So let’s stick with VS for our kitchen cabinet.

You generally speaking won’t use much whiskey in cooking. Yes, I know there are recipes that call for it, and bourbon particularly matches well with coffee and chocolate, but remember that there’s some recipe that calls for nearly any liquor, and our goal here is to hit the common cases. No, whiskey is on my list simply because, ounce for ounce, it’s likely to be useful when entertaining guests who drink. It’s a fair approximation of the truth to say that if a randomly chosen cocktail recipe doesn’t call for vodka, it probably calls for bourbon or scotch. And plenty of people just like whiskey on the rocks. I could write a little treatise here about the different sorts of whiskeys, sour-mash bourbon versus scotch malts, but this isn’t the time for that. Pick a midrange name bourbon or mixed scotch; bourbon is probably a bit more useful in cooking because it’s sweeter. Put it in the cabinet. Now you’re set.

Cordials are tricky. The problem with cordials is they’re meant to be drunk a very small amount at a time. Which is fine. Except that means that you open the bottle, and you pour a couple of tiny glasses of Grand Marnier or what have you, and then it sits in the cabinet and then you buy another, because you tried one at a party and kind of liked it, and then the next thing you know, your liquor cabinet has 150 bottles in it: a bottle of wine, a few bottles of spirits, and 146 different varieties of cordial, each 7/8ths full, except for that “egg liqueur” thing your parents gave you that they bought in 1962 in Verona, which is only 1/8th full, because over the years it has evaporated away leaving a gloopy, disturbing yolk-coloured pudding on the bottom of the bottle. (Note: egg liqueur really exists.)

But a good cordial has its place, particularly one classified as a digestif. They really do work. I’ve found that if I’m feeling a little ill, for example, often a small glass of creme de menthe or Sambuca can help settle my stomach. So find one you like (how? Visit your friends who have the aforementioned 146 bottles and try theirs) and buy one bottle. The rules for inventory management of digestifs is simple, but you have to keep on top of them and actually enforce them: If the bottle is unopened a year after you buy it, give or throw it away, and if you haven’t returned to an open coridal a year after you opened it, give up. Throw it away.

For equipment, there is again no end to the goofy booze-related merchandise you can buy. All you really need are a set of wine glasses that you like, and a reliable, well-made wing-type corkscrew, although there are of course other varieties available. There is a real pleasure in fine, special-purpose glasses for given drinks, and if you have the cash to burn, go for it. But a nice set of simple wine glasses goes a long way. For your “survival kit” needs, make sure you get glasses that are dishwasher-safe. And while I’m a little skeptical of those wine vaccum pumps to try to “save” your wine for a few days after opening, they are inexpensive and do seem to let you eke out maybe an extra day. Since most corks expand after being removed, the kits are convenient if for no other reason than to have some extra plastic corks.

That’s everything you need. Obviously, there are exceptions — if you cook Japanese cuisine, for example, you’ll want a bottle of sake for mixing with miso — but if you need to invoke those, you’ll know it.

Things You Don’t Need

-Rum. Shut up. You don’t need it. I know, you think you need it, particularly that Myers’ dark rum. But you don’t need that. You need a bottle of molasses. Use that instead of the rum. For recipes that call for rum that actually need alcohol, use your brandy and a little molasses, instead.
-Tequila.
-Gin. It’s useful in martinis and gin and tonics, but that’s it.
-Rye. Remember when I said just pick some random whiskey and be done with it? Small modification: don’t pick rye. Nobody likes it (except me). I don’t know why, but that’s just the way it is.
-Any cordial developed after about 1975. It’s hard to identify those if you don’t already know a priori, but if it is a strange colour and looks like it’s marketed at college chicks, stay away from it. Also, avoid anything made by Jacquins.
-Most other alcohol-related paraphernalia. Swizzle-sticks. Shot glasses. Shakers. Little umbrellas (hey, I said need, not want). Maraschino cherries.

There are maybe two more things you should have when stocking your kitchen with booze.

First, you should have a sense of adventure and a willingness to experiment. If you can, taste the ingredients that you’re using. Ask yourself what characteristics they have, and if there’s some booze that would do a better job. Look for opportunities to try new things when out and about so you don’t have to gamble $50 on a bottle of something that turns out to not be what you hoped.

Second, you should have a sense of what it means for you and your guests to drink responsibly. Let me reiterate that some people are allergic to alcohol, or have problems with alcoholism. Just as you would when serving nuts or shellfish, make sure you know the dietary restrictions of your guests before you serve them drinks or food with alcohol.

And with all that said, na zdorovie!

Hobbyist cooks are almost by definition equipment and gadget freaks. This is one endeavor where the latent object has great power.

Therefore, as a public service, I’m here to tell you what I think you really need, and what is just stuff that’s nice to have.

You really need one good knife. I suggest a 8-10 inch chef’s knife depending on how big your hands are. I have a soft spot for my mom’s old chinese cleaver, but I never use it. A couple of good expensive paring knives also help, but are not critical.

You really need one good non-stick pan. I used to think non-stick pans were for girlie-men who didn’t know how to season a decent cast iron skillet. But I find that a 10 inch silverstone-lined frying is perfect for almost everything. I use my pan for

- Eggs
- Stir fry and saute of all types.
- Pan roasting steak and potatoes.
- Fish.
- Making reduced sauces.
- Anything else that is small enough to fit.

For bigger jobs you of course need a bigger pan, but I hardly ever use by larger frying pans anymore, so I think bigger jobs are rare.

You really need one good soup pot. I suggest a 6-8 quart soup pot/dutch oven. Perfect for soup, stew, oven roasting stuff and making pasta. I recently tried one of those tall stock pot things with the pasta insert and it blows. I like my dutch oven better.

You really need a decent cutting board. Make it big enough so you have room to work. I like the wood ones best. But I’m getting old and have started to use lighter plastic ones that are easier to clean.

You really need a good oven. By good I mean, at least even. Sadly, you are usually stuck with the oven you have.

That’s really it. You don’t need a Wok. You don’t need a huge flame thrower stove burner that can char a whole turkey in 20 minutes. You don’t need a suitcase full of knives. You don’t need three ovens. You don’t need a bread machine, Cuisinart, 9000 horse power mixer, or all the rest. But damn they are nice if you have them.

Also, you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on cookware to get good stuff. Buy it on sale. Go to a restaurant supply house. In particular, don’t buy super expensive frying pans. Frying pans, if you are using them right, get destroyed. Buy a $30 pan every couple of years instead of a $100 pan every couple of years.

Oh right. You need a rice cooker.